Main Menu

Bounce Rate: Why does it Matter? (Plus Tips for Keeping It Low)

Bounce rate: it’s a term you hear all over in the world of digital marketing.

For many people, though, it’s a vexing phrase.

Fortunately, the definition of “bounce rate” isn’t as confusing as it might seem. “Bounce rate” refers to the number of people who come to your website and leave, or “bounce” off, after only interacting with the page they landed on. When this number is high, it indicates that your site isn’t as compelling or directed as it could be. When it’s low, however, it’s a good indication that you’re on-track to turn more leads into sales.

Today, we’re going to talk about how bounce rate works and how you can keep it low.

How Bounce Rate Affects Conversions

When you run a business, your website is one of your most critical assets. In addition to helping people gain a better understanding of your business, your website also provides the content, materials, and information strangers need to become customers. If people are just bouncing off your site without interacting with any of that material, however, all the effort you’ve put into building and maintaining the site is essentially going to waste.

As we mentioned above, a high bounce rate means your site is doing something wrong. It also means your conversion rate is likely to be low since you’re not “hooking” customers and keeping them engaged with your online material. Therefore, it’s essential to take proactive steps toward lowering your bounce rate and making your online content more compelling.

10 Tips for Lowering Your Bounce Rate

If your bounce rate is a bit higher than you’d like, follow these ten tips to reduce it:

Improve Your Internal Linking Strategy

One of the reasons people might be leaving your site is that they can’t find anything of interest to them within it. One potential way to combat this is to add links to other pages within your website into your on-page content. This creates an internal link strategy, which gives your customers more places to explore on your site and helps them find other material they find interesting and compelling.

For best results, use anchor text to embed internal links to related information on other parts of your site, like your blog or homepage.

Provide Plenty Of Educational Information

If your website is entirely made up of product pages, it won’t appeal to all visitors. While some people who land on your site might be ready to make a purchase, many won’t be, which means product pages won’t hold much interest for them. To balance this out, be sure to provide plenty of informational pages on your website. Things like blogs, free guides, white papers, and more will help on-the-fence customers understand your industry and mission, and, ultimately, move through your sales funnel.

Use Your Sidebar To Help Customers Navigate Your Site

One of the biggest issues for sites with high bounce rates is navigability. If readers can’t find their way around your site or, say, from your blog to your home page, they’re likely to get frustrated and leave. With this in mind, use your sidebar space to include helpful links. Great examples include an “about us” link or a “where to go from here” link. Both of these will be useful for first-time visitors and will make your site easier for people to move through.

Craft Higher-Quality Content

Today’s readers are smart and discerning, and they’ll leave sites they perceive as low-quality. With this in mind, be sure that all the content you display on your site is high-quality and useful. Check it carefully for spelling and grammar errors, as well as for usefulness. Is it helping your readers? Are they deriving real value from it? If not, it may be time to revisit it.

The higher-quality your site content, the more likely it is that your bounce rate will begin shrinking.

Use Prominent Calls-To-Action On Your Landing Pages

If you’re noticing high bounce rates on your landing pages, make your calls-to-action (CTAs) more prominent and compelling. Ideally, your web pages should drive your customers to act, and compelling CTA content is one of the best ways to do that. For best results, use power words in your CTA, follow best landing page design practices, and update the entire page any time your target audience or demographic changes. These simple updates will help decrease your bounce rate and make your landing pages more compelling for your readers.

Create A Healthy Mixture Of Short- And Long-Form Content

While long-form content converts better than shorter content, both have a place in your site strategy. To appeal to new visitors, create informative, short-form content that can be consumed rapidly.

To appeal to more knowledgeable, more experienced visitors, create extensive guides and long-form content. A healthy mix of the two will help you appeal to all your audiences.

Make Your Site Beautiful

Sometimes, your content is just fine but the way it’s laid out isn’t. Think about the ugliest site you’ve ever seen. Even if the content was informative, you likely left because there was no white space, the text was hard to read on the page, or the colors put you at risk of seizures.

To avoid this same fate for your site, keep it simple and visually pleasing. High-contrast, minimally-designed sites perform well with readers, so bear this in mind as you arrange yours.

Improve Your Page’s Load Speed

You only have a few seconds to convince people to stay on your site, and if all that time is spent trying to load your site’s various elements, you’re out of luck. With this in mind, improve your site’s load speed to promote a more positive user experience and decrease your bounce rate all at once.

A Better Site Starts Here

Bounce rate is a critical metric when considering the success of your site. Decrease your bounce rate and make your entire site more engaging by following these eight simple tips. To make your life even easier, partner with the experts at Thrive Internet Marketing. We can help you decrease your bounce rate and maximize conversions on your website.

No comments yet.

About Small Business Can

The idea for Small Business Can comes from an Ulster Bank initiative when we went and talked to hundreds of businesspeople and asked them about the types of business supports they most valued. The majority said that they valued the insights of other businesspeople the most. We came up with smallbusinesscan.com, a site run by businesspeople for businesspeople. Read more...